


The Man Who Would Rake Leaves

by LizardWhisperer



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Floof, spn season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 13:00:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20966963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizardWhisperer/pseuds/LizardWhisperer
Summary: SPN S6, ep20  Just a little piece of floof.Haven't you always wondered what kept Dean diddling those leaves for so long?I have...





	The Man Who Would Rake Leaves

**Author's Note:**

> [](https://imgur.com/3BJOPjd)   


Dean’s work boots crunched through the dry, brittle leaves. He surveyed the area, leaning on the rake. It was as good a spot as any to begin.

It was over. They had won—if you could call it winning. The apocalypse didn’t happen and the world went on, none the wiser of its near destruction. But for a brief moment, Dean’s whole world ended—his brother was lost to the devil, Bobby and Cas were dead, and Dean’s face was more hamburger than handsome. But in the end, a childhood memory and a brother’s love prevailed over the end of times. Sam Winchester fell into the pit, Dean Winchester fell into domesticity, and the damn leaves just kept falling.

Dean sunk the metal tines in the top layer and drew the dead foliage toward himself, slowly.

Lost. If they had won, why was Dean so lost? His life looked just peachy, sharing a bed with a beautiful, vibrant woman and a life with her son, in a real house, with real furniture and a real lawn—and real leaves. Some days, Dean really felt it. He started his day in the same shower as yesterday, the full-sized soap bottles right where he had left them. He enjoyed choosing his clothes from the ones hanging neatly in his closet and uniformly folded in a drawer, instead of shaking the wrinkles from the ones he pulled from a duffel bag. Dean couldn’t remember the last time he’d sniffed a flannel, before sliding it on. When he kissed Lisa good morning, she felt like his as did Ben, when he knocked on the kid’s door to wake him up for school. Dean left for work, feeling the surety that his family would be there when he returned, sharing stories of math, friends, and the new detective show on that night. They felt like family—or what Dean always thought family should feel like. To the hunter, family had always meant sacrifice, fierce loyalty, and a bloody fight. Family meant a brother, but also an old drunk and an awkward, righteous angel. It had all been hard edges and painful lessons, fear and conflict, wound tightly around a softer place, carefully guarded deep, deep in the center. 

Now, Dean could laugh openly with Ben over the dirty text that got some bonehead cut from the soccer team and also listen while his charge expressed his uneasiness that he wasn’t good enough to stay on the team, himself. He helped Lisa shop for groceries and read food labels and picked out drain opener and the trash bags that stretch. He sealed windows, bought golf clubs, and made love, all the while feeling the sheer domestic normalcy of his life. So how come he didn’t _believe_ in it?

Dean Winchester believed in a lot of things that others didn’t—shouldn’t. He believed in all manner of creatures; witches, gods, and monsters. He’d been to both Hell and Heaven and fought against and beside their denizens. Dean had known both the ire and the friendship of an angel. His very own angel. Castiel had not only saved Dean from Hell, but opened the hunter’s eyes to the nature of God’s realm, beyond dogma and theology. And then he fell from that realm—Cas fell _for him_. In the end, putting his faith in Dean had gotten the angel powerless—and dead. Twice. In the face of Cas’ double-resurrection, Dean had no choice but to believe in the God, credited for his return. Cas had come back, but where was he now? The angel had turned his broad back on everything he ever knew to follow Dean and his brother—then vanished. Dean thought of Cas, in middle of the night, with Lisa’s warm body pressed into his side and his watch ticking on his nightstand. Cas had had an annoying habit of watching Dean sleep. In the past, the hunter would often wake up to the silhouette of a rumpled trench coat topped with a shock of unkempt hair standing over him. 

More than once, Dean had awoken with a gasp, startling Lisa awake and explaining away his coating of sweat and panting as “just another nightmare” and no, he didn’t want to talk about it. But what Dean couldn’t explain to his partner was that when he awoke, nightmare or not, he thought he might have glimpsed that rumpled trench coat, by their bed. Some nights, his head echoed with the distant flap of wings.

Dean continued to drag the rake halfheartedly over the lawn. He wasn’t making much of a pile.

Could Cas still be watching over him? Dean paused and used his sleeve to wipe his forehead. The move was theatrical, at best, as the October chill and Dean’s lack of backbone in his work meant he was far from working up a sweat. Stooping to pick up the leaves, Dean thought _naw, if Cas was watching, I’d have that super-creepy feeling_. Just then, the breeze picked up and Dean got a whiff of—Sulfur? That definitely wasn’t Cas. Dean sniffed at the air, like a hound on a hunt. Whatever it was, if it had been there at all, was gone. Dean chuckled to himself, _probably some dog poop under these stupid leaves_. He stuffed a few handfuls in the stretchy-style bag he’d shopped for, then stood and resumed remaking the sad pile that the wind had scattered. Dean was suddenly seized with the notion that if he just turned around quickly enough, a strong, stern figure would be there, watching him, considering Dean’s new life. What would he and Cas talk about if the angel were really there? His quality taste in lawn and leaf bags? Or perhaps Dean’s ineptitude at taming a few leaves into submission? 

Or that Dean saw the angel’s blue eyes every single time he closed his own?

There was another gust and this time Dean did turn to see—nothing. Just an unraked yard, a sidewalk, a mailbox, a street. No trace of Sulfur, no Heavenly figure, nothing supernatural spying on his shitty yard work. No angel.

It was over.

Dean diddled those leaves another three-quarters of an hour, scenting the sharp, October air and listening with all he had for the distant flap of wings.


End file.
